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6. Arrival of the Royal Navy in Brazil (1806)
When the fleet of the Royal Navy commanded by Admiral Sidney Smith sailed to Brazil, in 1806, his orders were to establish a British presence in South America, by whatever means necessary.
Britain since the early 18th Century had ambitions to create a colony or protectorate south of the Equator. Until 1805, the estuary of the Plata River was considered the most favorable location, due to its strategic and economic relevance in the region. Some plans had already been drafted among the top-most government officials, and all of them involved the capture of Buenos Aires, capital of the Viceroyalty of La Plata and at least the liberation of Chile and Peru from Spanish control, but all of them were cancelled, for being too unpractical [1].
When Great Britain broke its relations with Portugal, though, some members of the ministry of Sir William Pitt quickly proposed that the Colony of Brazil could be a very important strategic asset in the geopolitical context of South America, and could be used to weaken the Spanish presence in the continent.
Even if there was consensus that the complete occupation of the colony – due to its huge territory and population – would be impossible, and that Britain’s main interest was actually the opening of the ports to exploit the virgin colonial market, other details were controversial. The approved project, elaborated by Lord Henry Dundas, Viscount Melville (called “Melville Plan”), was very pragmatic, emphasizing cooperation with the Luso-Brazilian authorities in the colony, and the fulfilling of immediate economic interests. In early 1806, after Admiral Sir Sidney Smith finished the coastal bombardment of Porto, Lisboa and Cádiz, the goals he was supposed to fulfill were:
In June 1806, the British fleet commanded by Admiral Sir Sidney Smith, with the captured Portuguese ships under British supervisors, arrived in Recife, in the very northeastern tip of the Brazilian territory. Agreeing with the assessment of Lord Percy Clinton, Viscount of Strangford, Admiral Smith believed that a peaceful solution would be more convenient to Britain’s interests. Portuguese America was too large, its population numbered above 3 million inhabitants, and most of them were actually slaves, mulattoes and primitive aboriginals. This meant that an attempt of military takeover of the colony could result in disastrous consequences for the occupying forces, and open another theater of war too far from the home islands. After all, the British military was already committed to operations in Africa and India, in the Caribbean, all of them peripheral in relation to the main campaign against Napoleonic France.
On the other hand, Lord Strangford trusted that cunning and sensible diplomacy could transform the Brazil into a useful and valuable ally to curb the Spanish and French dominions in the Americas, without shedding any blood of his compatriots.
At first, gunboat diplomacy indeed proved unnecessary. The British ships were welcomed inside the port of Recife and received by the local Governor, Caetano Pinto de Miranda Montenegro – who had been governor of the Captaincy of Mato Grosso during the War of 1801. Lord Strangford, courteously received in the gubernatorial palace, soon realized that no news had come from Europe regarding Britain’s coastal bombardment of Portugal, and that the Luso-Brazilian authorities weren’t even aware of the diplomatic break-up between London and Lisboa.
Taking advantage of the opportunity, Lord Strangford – who had been the last British Ambassador in Lisboa – explained to the Luso-Brazilian colonial administrators a more convenient version of the facts: Portugal had fallen to the Kingdom of Spain, ally to Napoléon Bonaparte, the tyrant of France. Princess Carlota Joaquina, ruling in the name of Queen Maria I, proved to be a traitorous creature, concerned with her own petty interests instead of those of the Portuguese nation. The whole Royal Family, including Queen Maria, her son and heir, Prince João, and her grandchildren, became hostages in the court of King Carlos IV of Spain.
Appalled by these dire news, D. Miranda Montenegro dutifully sent urgent messengers to Rio de Janeiro to warn the Viceroy of Brazil and his ministry about the sudden ruin of the metropolis.
In the next month, the British delegation arrived in Rio de Janeiro, being courteously received by the Viceroy of the Colony, D. Fernando José de Portugal e Castro – the former Governor of the Captaincy of Bahia – and his council of Portuguese noblemen in a palace near the harbor.
Rio de Janeiro, Capital of the Portuguese America
Lord Strangford at first adopted a very friendly demeanor, explaining the extraordinary episodes that had occurred in the other side of the Atlantic. The Luso-Brazilian ministers, after all, weren’t aware of the extent of Napoléon’s impressive victories, or how much the Kingdom of Portugal had fallen to the Spanish influence under the short regency of Princess Carlota Joaquina. It was clear, then, that there was no legitimate government in the metropolis, only the despotic Spanish administration – like it had already happened in the 17th Century, when King Felipe II of Spain invaded Portugal and claimed its crown and its dependencies, in the period known as "Iberian Union".
Now, as Lord Strangford forewarned, Portuguese America would be partitioned between the Crown of Spain and the French Empire. Aftewards, D. Fernando Castro and his assistant ministers turned pale when the British officer announced that France intended to outlaw the Catholic faith, profane every religious sanctuary and banish every priest from the country. Even worse, France would abolish slavery in the Americas, as it had done barely twenty years before in Haiti [2], ensuring the domination of the civilized whites by the “dark races”.
Of course, it was in the best interests of His Majesty, the King of Great Britain and Ireland, that Portuguese America might be able to provide assistance in the project to restorate the natural order of the world: by defeating the godless tyrant Napoléon Bonaparte, his atrocious Spanish allies, and restoring the Bragança dynasty to its rightful position in Lisboa, by the grace of God. To fulfill this bold enterprise, however, the Crown of the United Kingdom must have direct access to the Colony of Brazil, and trade between the countries must be freely permitted.
Initially D. Fernando Castro and his cabinet hesitated, still believing they could refuse Lord Strangford’s egregious proposals, nervously claiming that the laws of the metropolis expressly forbid commerce with any other nation – including Portugal’s allies – and that no colonial troops could be levied to be attached to the British forces. For a time, they even claimed that a legitimate metropolitan government had to be found, even if in exile, and that the colonial military should be employed to reconquer the Portuguese homeland from the Spanish occupiers.
By 16 July, though, the façade had already worn out, and the British officers in Rio de Janeiro, exasperated and impatient, directly threatened the Portuguese colonial administrators: they would comply with Great Britain’s demands, or Rio de Janeiro would be seized by force. A very serious threat: the Royal Navy’s ships were still anchored inside the Guanabara Bay, and their military contingents had already disembarked in the capital, by the reluctant permission of D. Fernando Castro. The British regiments outnumbered the city garrison by a sizeable margin, and, besides, their fleet would make short work of the defensive fortifications.
In 17 July, D. Fernando Castro, agreeing with his intimidated counselor’s urgings, signed the Treaty of Rio de Janeiro, in the name of Queen Maria I of Portugal and of the Portuguese Government, with the following terms:
Every harbor in Brazil until then was under strict vigilance of the Colonial Governors, and non-Portuguese ships weren’t welcomed. After 1805, however, these ports would become busy with sea vessels coming from the British Isles, from Canada, from Africa and even from India. In practice, after the Battle of Huelva, Britain would become the only European power able to sustain commercial routes through the oceans during the Napoleonic Wars, considering that their own fleets thwarted maritime voyages of countries under the sphere of France. Besides, after continuous years of warfare, Europe was exhausted and its resources were directed inwards. Only the United Kingdom, experiencing the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, managed to produce and export a staggering amount of resources to every other continent.
Now, D. Fernando José de Portugal e Castro saw himself in a very difficult position. Renowned for his unwavering loyalty to the Crown – indeed, his successful repression of the Baiana Revolt when he was the governor warranted him the elevation to the top-most office inside the Colony – and also for his humility and incorruptibleness, desired to preserve the order and uphold the laws of his suzerain in the Colony. On the other hand, extraordinary circumstances demanded extraordinary measures, and the implementation of immediate reforms to allow for a counterattack against his nation’s enemies. Realizing that as long as Portugal was occupied by Spain there would be no legitimate metropolitan superintendence to answer to, he nevertheless signed all of his decrees as a representative of the exiled Queen of Portugal I, using the Royal Seal of the Braganças, to provide a minimum of legitimacy to his de facto independent rule.
Dom Fernando José de Portugal e Castro, Viceroy of Brazil
Acting under the auspices of the increasingly more pervasive British advisors, D. Fernando José de Portugal e Castro implemented other controversial measures, expressly forbidden by the colonial legislation: ordered the building of gunpowder and cannon factories to provide supplies to the colonial army in Rio de Janeiro, contradicting the prohibition of manufactures inside the colony. Coinage would still be minted using Queen Maria’s effigy and all the taxes would be exacted in her name, but the revenues would not be send overseas to Portugal’s coffers, but rather reinvested in the colony. The governors were ordered to raise their armies and militias to form a combined army, as well as furnish whatever ships available to organize a grand strategy against the Spanish and French dominions, something that had never happened since Brazil’s foundation, as every governor usually acted inside its own Captaincy. Finally, new roads would be built to connect the coastal cities: from Porto Alegre in the Captaincy of São Pedro do Rio Grande all the way to Fortaleza in the Captaincy of Ceará, as well as new routes connecting the coast to the border fortresses in the Captaincy of Mato Grosso, the least populated and with the most difficult access, to facilitate the transportation of troops and supplies. All of these measures directly contradicted the prohibitive metropolitan legislation, and characterized crimes of treason and usurping of royal prerogatives.
___________________________________________________________
Historical Notes: The part in which the British statesmen hatched at least three different plans for an invasion of the La Plata provinces, as late as 1800, is all true, all of which was only effectively attempted in the years of 1806 and 1807, when they captured Buenos Aires and Montevideo, with at least 10.000 soldiers.
In 1794, the French Revolutionary clique of Maximillien Robespierre abolished slavery in every French colony, the most significant being St. Domingue in the island of Hispaniola, whose African-descended population was majoritarian. Afterwards, when the moderate Girondin government revoked the abolition law, slavery was reinstated, but the slave rebellion in St. Domingue that converted into the Haitian Revolution was already in progress.
Britain since the early 18th Century had ambitions to create a colony or protectorate south of the Equator. Until 1805, the estuary of the Plata River was considered the most favorable location, due to its strategic and economic relevance in the region. Some plans had already been drafted among the top-most government officials, and all of them involved the capture of Buenos Aires, capital of the Viceroyalty of La Plata and at least the liberation of Chile and Peru from Spanish control, but all of them were cancelled, for being too unpractical [1].
When Great Britain broke its relations with Portugal, though, some members of the ministry of Sir William Pitt quickly proposed that the Colony of Brazil could be a very important strategic asset in the geopolitical context of South America, and could be used to weaken the Spanish presence in the continent.
Even if there was consensus that the complete occupation of the colony – due to its huge territory and population – would be impossible, and that Britain’s main interest was actually the opening of the ports to exploit the virgin colonial market, other details were controversial. The approved project, elaborated by Lord Henry Dundas, Viscount Melville (called “Melville Plan”), was very pragmatic, emphasizing cooperation with the Luso-Brazilian authorities in the colony, and the fulfilling of immediate economic interests. In early 1806, after Admiral Sir Sidney Smith finished the coastal bombardment of Porto, Lisboa and Cádiz, the goals he was supposed to fulfill were:
- The ports of Brazil must be opened to British commercial enterprises and military operations;
- The Luso-Brazilian authorities must be coerced, by whatever means necessary, to provide operational and material assistance to the planned British campaigns against the Spanish and French dominions in South America and in the Caribbean;
- A British diplomatic facility will be established in Rio de Janeiro to maintain direct contact between the colonial authorities and the government in London;
- If the Royal Navy faces any resistance, it will have authorization to use force to seize the port of Rio de Janeiro. If this happens, the occupying army will be reinforced from troops coming from the recently captured Dutch Cape Colony in south Africa, and later from freshly recruited regiments from Ireland; In any case, every military sea vessel in colonial Brazil will be captured by the Royal Navy;
- If any of these objectives become impossible, the port-cities of Portuguese America will be destroyed by coastal bombardment; in any every, every military sea vessels in colonial Brazil will be captured by the Royal Navy.
******
In June 1806, the British fleet commanded by Admiral Sir Sidney Smith, with the captured Portuguese ships under British supervisors, arrived in Recife, in the very northeastern tip of the Brazilian territory. Agreeing with the assessment of Lord Percy Clinton, Viscount of Strangford, Admiral Smith believed that a peaceful solution would be more convenient to Britain’s interests. Portuguese America was too large, its population numbered above 3 million inhabitants, and most of them were actually slaves, mulattoes and primitive aboriginals. This meant that an attempt of military takeover of the colony could result in disastrous consequences for the occupying forces, and open another theater of war too far from the home islands. After all, the British military was already committed to operations in Africa and India, in the Caribbean, all of them peripheral in relation to the main campaign against Napoleonic France.
On the other hand, Lord Strangford trusted that cunning and sensible diplomacy could transform the Brazil into a useful and valuable ally to curb the Spanish and French dominions in the Americas, without shedding any blood of his compatriots.
At first, gunboat diplomacy indeed proved unnecessary. The British ships were welcomed inside the port of Recife and received by the local Governor, Caetano Pinto de Miranda Montenegro – who had been governor of the Captaincy of Mato Grosso during the War of 1801. Lord Strangford, courteously received in the gubernatorial palace, soon realized that no news had come from Europe regarding Britain’s coastal bombardment of Portugal, and that the Luso-Brazilian authorities weren’t even aware of the diplomatic break-up between London and Lisboa.
Taking advantage of the opportunity, Lord Strangford – who had been the last British Ambassador in Lisboa – explained to the Luso-Brazilian colonial administrators a more convenient version of the facts: Portugal had fallen to the Kingdom of Spain, ally to Napoléon Bonaparte, the tyrant of France. Princess Carlota Joaquina, ruling in the name of Queen Maria I, proved to be a traitorous creature, concerned with her own petty interests instead of those of the Portuguese nation. The whole Royal Family, including Queen Maria, her son and heir, Prince João, and her grandchildren, became hostages in the court of King Carlos IV of Spain.
Appalled by these dire news, D. Miranda Montenegro dutifully sent urgent messengers to Rio de Janeiro to warn the Viceroy of Brazil and his ministry about the sudden ruin of the metropolis.
In the next month, the British delegation arrived in Rio de Janeiro, being courteously received by the Viceroy of the Colony, D. Fernando José de Portugal e Castro – the former Governor of the Captaincy of Bahia – and his council of Portuguese noblemen in a palace near the harbor.
Rio de Janeiro, Capital of the Portuguese America
Lord Strangford at first adopted a very friendly demeanor, explaining the extraordinary episodes that had occurred in the other side of the Atlantic. The Luso-Brazilian ministers, after all, weren’t aware of the extent of Napoléon’s impressive victories, or how much the Kingdom of Portugal had fallen to the Spanish influence under the short regency of Princess Carlota Joaquina. It was clear, then, that there was no legitimate government in the metropolis, only the despotic Spanish administration – like it had already happened in the 17th Century, when King Felipe II of Spain invaded Portugal and claimed its crown and its dependencies, in the period known as "Iberian Union".
Now, as Lord Strangford forewarned, Portuguese America would be partitioned between the Crown of Spain and the French Empire. Aftewards, D. Fernando Castro and his assistant ministers turned pale when the British officer announced that France intended to outlaw the Catholic faith, profane every religious sanctuary and banish every priest from the country. Even worse, France would abolish slavery in the Americas, as it had done barely twenty years before in Haiti [2], ensuring the domination of the civilized whites by the “dark races”.
Of course, it was in the best interests of His Majesty, the King of Great Britain and Ireland, that Portuguese America might be able to provide assistance in the project to restorate the natural order of the world: by defeating the godless tyrant Napoléon Bonaparte, his atrocious Spanish allies, and restoring the Bragança dynasty to its rightful position in Lisboa, by the grace of God. To fulfill this bold enterprise, however, the Crown of the United Kingdom must have direct access to the Colony of Brazil, and trade between the countries must be freely permitted.
Initially D. Fernando Castro and his cabinet hesitated, still believing they could refuse Lord Strangford’s egregious proposals, nervously claiming that the laws of the metropolis expressly forbid commerce with any other nation – including Portugal’s allies – and that no colonial troops could be levied to be attached to the British forces. For a time, they even claimed that a legitimate metropolitan government had to be found, even if in exile, and that the colonial military should be employed to reconquer the Portuguese homeland from the Spanish occupiers.
By 16 July, though, the façade had already worn out, and the British officers in Rio de Janeiro, exasperated and impatient, directly threatened the Portuguese colonial administrators: they would comply with Great Britain’s demands, or Rio de Janeiro would be seized by force. A very serious threat: the Royal Navy’s ships were still anchored inside the Guanabara Bay, and their military contingents had already disembarked in the capital, by the reluctant permission of D. Fernando Castro. The British regiments outnumbered the city garrison by a sizeable margin, and, besides, their fleet would make short work of the defensive fortifications.
In 17 July, D. Fernando Castro, agreeing with his intimidated counselor’s urgings, signed the Treaty of Rio de Janeiro, in the name of Queen Maria I of Portugal and of the Portuguese Government, with the following terms:
- The colonial ports would be henceforth opened to any British sea vessel, either military or commercial;
- The land and maritime military forces of Portuguese America would assist in the war effort against the Kingdom of Spain and the French Empire, and could be available to serve under officers from the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, in campaigns in the Guianas, in the Caribbean and in the La Plata provinces;
- A “war-time” Embassy, headed by Lord Strangford, would be installed in Rio de Janeiro
- The ports of Salvador and Fortaleza, in the northeast, will be used as naval bases to launch operations against the Spanish and French dominions in the Americas.
Every harbor in Brazil until then was under strict vigilance of the Colonial Governors, and non-Portuguese ships weren’t welcomed. After 1805, however, these ports would become busy with sea vessels coming from the British Isles, from Canada, from Africa and even from India. In practice, after the Battle of Huelva, Britain would become the only European power able to sustain commercial routes through the oceans during the Napoleonic Wars, considering that their own fleets thwarted maritime voyages of countries under the sphere of France. Besides, after continuous years of warfare, Europe was exhausted and its resources were directed inwards. Only the United Kingdom, experiencing the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, managed to produce and export a staggering amount of resources to every other continent.
Now, D. Fernando José de Portugal e Castro saw himself in a very difficult position. Renowned for his unwavering loyalty to the Crown – indeed, his successful repression of the Baiana Revolt when he was the governor warranted him the elevation to the top-most office inside the Colony – and also for his humility and incorruptibleness, desired to preserve the order and uphold the laws of his suzerain in the Colony. On the other hand, extraordinary circumstances demanded extraordinary measures, and the implementation of immediate reforms to allow for a counterattack against his nation’s enemies. Realizing that as long as Portugal was occupied by Spain there would be no legitimate metropolitan superintendence to answer to, he nevertheless signed all of his decrees as a representative of the exiled Queen of Portugal I, using the Royal Seal of the Braganças, to provide a minimum of legitimacy to his de facto independent rule.
Dom Fernando José de Portugal e Castro, Viceroy of Brazil
Acting under the auspices of the increasingly more pervasive British advisors, D. Fernando José de Portugal e Castro implemented other controversial measures, expressly forbidden by the colonial legislation: ordered the building of gunpowder and cannon factories to provide supplies to the colonial army in Rio de Janeiro, contradicting the prohibition of manufactures inside the colony. Coinage would still be minted using Queen Maria’s effigy and all the taxes would be exacted in her name, but the revenues would not be send overseas to Portugal’s coffers, but rather reinvested in the colony. The governors were ordered to raise their armies and militias to form a combined army, as well as furnish whatever ships available to organize a grand strategy against the Spanish and French dominions, something that had never happened since Brazil’s foundation, as every governor usually acted inside its own Captaincy. Finally, new roads would be built to connect the coastal cities: from Porto Alegre in the Captaincy of São Pedro do Rio Grande all the way to Fortaleza in the Captaincy of Ceará, as well as new routes connecting the coast to the border fortresses in the Captaincy of Mato Grosso, the least populated and with the most difficult access, to facilitate the transportation of troops and supplies. All of these measures directly contradicted the prohibitive metropolitan legislation, and characterized crimes of treason and usurping of royal prerogatives.
___________________________________________________________
Historical Notes: The part in which the British statesmen hatched at least three different plans for an invasion of the La Plata provinces, as late as 1800, is all true, all of which was only effectively attempted in the years of 1806 and 1807, when they captured Buenos Aires and Montevideo, with at least 10.000 soldiers.
In 1794, the French Revolutionary clique of Maximillien Robespierre abolished slavery in every French colony, the most significant being St. Domingue in the island of Hispaniola, whose African-descended population was majoritarian. Afterwards, when the moderate Girondin government revoked the abolition law, slavery was reinstated, but the slave rebellion in St. Domingue that converted into the Haitian Revolution was already in progress.
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